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3U VPX software radio boards

Pentek has introduced 14 products in its new family of 3U VPX boards for data acquisition, software radio and digital signal processing. These new boards offer flexible backplane fabric connections supporting maximum data rates of up to 4Gbyte/s with PCIe (PCI Express) Gen 2 (Generation 2) and 2.5Gbyte/s with other protocols. The 3U VPX form factor is compact and suitable for avionics, including unmanned aerial vehicles, shipboard and airborne radar, and signal intelligence applications. Each of the new 3U x8 VPX modules features a PCIe Gen 2 interface. The PCIe interface includes a bridge that provides PCIe lane-width negotiation for x1, x4, x8 or x16 data transfers over the VPX backplane. All of the 14 products feature high-speed A/D converters from 105 to 500MHz with 12- to 16bit resolution, Xilinx Virtex FPGA products, D/A converters to 800 MHz with 16bit resolution, wideband and narrowband digital downconverters and upconverters with channel counts from 2 to 256, and multi-frequency clock synthesisers from 20 to 500MHz.

All modules feature a fabric-transparent crossbar switch that delivers many benefits. The switch allows flexible assignment of the PCIe interface lanes to backplane connector pins so system integrators can easily match a diverse range of backplane topologies. The switch supports other gigabit serial protocols for moving data, such as Xilinx Aurora and Serial Rapid I/O. The switch simply passes the gigabit serial traffic from one port to another, totally independent of any particular protocol. Multiple data streams can be sent through the switch simultaneously. The switch also allows all modules to act as a VPX switch, to manage serial fabric connections to and from other modules across the backplane. The model 5331 features a dual 14bit 105MHz A/D, a 16-channel DDC and Virtex FPGA. Model 5341 features a dual 14bit 125MHz A/D, a four-channel DDC, dual 16bit 500MHz D/As, a DUC and a Virtex II-Pro FPGA. Model 5341-420 features a transceiver with dual wideband DDC and interpolation filter.

The model 5341-430 features a transceiver with 256-channel narrowband DDC. Model 5342 features a quad 14bit 125MHz A/D, a 16bit 500MHz D/A, a DUC and Virtex 4 FPGAs. Model 5342-428 features a transceiver with quad multiband DDCs and interpolation filter. Model 5350 features a quad 16bit 200MHz A/D and Virtex 5 FPGAs. Model 5351 features a quad 16bit 200MHz A/D, a 256-channel DDC and Virtex 5 FPGAs. Model 5352 features a quad 16bit 200MHz A/D, a 32-channel DDC and Virtex 5 FPGAs. Model 5353 features a quad 16bit 200MHz A/D, 2- to 4-channel DDC and Virtex 5 FPGAs. Model 5356 features dual 14bit 400MHz A/Ds, dual 16bit 800MHz D/As, DUC and Virtex 5 FPGAs. Model 5358 features a dual 12bit 500MHz A/Ds, dual 16bit 800MHz D/As, DUC and Virtex 5 FPGAs. Model 5390 features a multi-frequency 8-output clock synthesiser. Model 5308 features a VPX x8 PCIe cable adapter. The VPX products comply with the VPX REDI specification and can be supplied in both air-cooled and conduction-cooled versions. The ReadyFlow board support package includes project files and examples to demonstrate all board features. ReadyFlow supports Windows, Linux and VxWorks operating systems.